by Cate Morgan
“Liam—”
“I know. Not an option, too many things at stake, never going to be the right time, end of the world, et cetera.” He gave her a wry smile. “This is my city, Callie. I’m here for a reason, and it isn’t to sit on the sidelines while you risk everything.” He swept wisps of hair from her face. “I’m Marked too, remember.”
Callie returned his smile. “I lost your ring in there.”
Liam shrugged and got to his feet, offering her a hand up. “I never cared much for it, anyway.”
Behind them Chase groaned as he came to.
“What now?” Donal wanted to know. “I hope we came away from that grand cock-up with something.”
Callie recalled the demon’s words. “We need to get in contact with the Tír. This is so, so much bigger than Maeve let on.”
Liam frowned. “How big are we talking?”
“Apocalypse big.” Donal nearly dropped Chase in his efforts to help him to his feet. “It’s starting?”
“Let’s just say Lilith hasn’t held back in regards to her opening salvo.”
Liam took Chase from Donal. “Let’s get back. It sounds like there’s a lot to talk about.”
Liam handed Chase a glass of whiskey rattling with ice. “Sorry.”
Chase took a swig and pressed the glass against his jaw, the bruise spreading like a sunset as he glared with what Liam suspected might be grudging respect. “Could’ve been worse,” the hunter allowed.
Liam brought the bottle over to Callie and Donal, who faced one another across the vast oak expanse of his library table. A rush of prickling heat coursed through him as he remembered kissing her there, reveling in firm muscle and soft skin, losing himself in her.
Callie leaned forward, pressing her fingertips into the table.
“I mistranslated,” Donal was saying. “But it still makes sense. The unrequited love was Lilith’s, who never got over being cast out of Eden, even though it was her choice to leave. When a Crossroads deal is made with one of her emissaries, that’s her way in. Unrequited love twisted to obsession is just one of her many keys to opening the door.”
Callie’s expression gave away nothing, even when Liam refilled her glass. “Maeve is more than an emissary from the Underworld.”
Donal ran a hand through his short dark hair. “That’s what’s worrying me.”
Callie raised an eyebrow. Her tone dripped sarcasm, much like her glass bled moisture onto a map of the French Quarter. “Is that all?”
Liam interrupted. “Who is Maeve, exactly? She brokered my Crossroads deal over a century ago, but I landed in New Orleans and haven’t seen her again until now. What’s her part in all this?”
Callie didn’t look away from Donal as he answered. “Maeve was one of the most powerful—and most feared—queens of Irish legend, dating way back before pre-Roman times. Her cunning was infamous, enough to give even Lilith a run for her money. It was assumed she died in battle, but her body was never found.”
Callie took up the tale. “She had a choice between redemption and Brighid, or serving Lilith to become an immortal queen after the End of Days.”
Donal nodded. “She could have become the first of Keepers.”
Liam set the whiskey bottle on the table. “You won’t be able to face her alone.”
Callie shook her head. “I doubt all nineteen Keepers could take her down.”
“You’re right—Yshotha must be Lilith’s preemptive strike in the apocalypse,” Donal reasoned.
Callie’s mouth thinned. “This is it. Lilith’s opening gambit. The war’s starting.”
After the Seven-Year war, Liam didn’t know if humanity could handle another one so soon, let alone the War of Wars. So much had been lost already, and it was clear humanity had reached the lowest point in its history.
“So how do we handle it?” he wanted to know.
Donal blinked. “Handle it?”
“Every demon has a weakness, right? What’s Yshotha’s? How do we kill it, or banish it? Something.”
Donal rocked his hand back and forth in midair. “This isn’t some lesser demon, one of the pestilent, mindless hordes of twisted creatures frothing from the Underworld. It isn’t even something that used to be human. Yshotha is a Greater Demon, bred of Hell and borne of Lilith. You don’t just banish it back to its mistress and hope it doesn’t show up again for a millennium or two.”
“Liam’s right.” Chase limped over and set his empty glass on the table as they stared at him in surprise. “This is a living, breathing demon. There must be a weakness—there’s always a weakness.”
Donal waved his hand at the unorganized pile of books he’d been buried in. “I’ve been through everything. We’re out of options. New Orleans is under the protection of the Loa, not the Tuatha. Eva couldn’t ascend. Neither could Callie. Without ascension, she’s mortal. Brighid can’t touch her here.”
Callied drummed her fingers on the table, gaze distant. We were invited here.”
“Trapped,” Donal corrected.
“Led,” Callie compromised. “The Baron let us in for a reason. Liam was brought here for a reason too. Hell, he’s been Marked. Brighid has no power here, but Brigitte does.” If Brighid had a Loa counterpart, it would be Maman Brigitte. Callie’s own words came back to her in a rush. “Everything is linked.”
Liam drummed his fingers on the table. “The Baron did tell me ‘one of the ladies’ might be involved.”
“What are you thinking, Callie?” Chase asked, watching her closely.
“Everything I know, everything I’m trained for, doesn’t work here.” Callie straightened. “I need to see the Baron. Alone.”
Chapter Five
Callie had been to New Orleans twice before. Both times were demon-related, both memorable.
1933: Two women found dead not far from where she walked now, on two separate nights, their blood drained. Amid rumors of vampires, she pursued a loup-garou through three back alleys, two courtyards and a cemetery. It was one of her first hunts, and it got away.
That was when she met Eva.
Keepers rarely met, as a rule. Circumstances occasionally provided opportunity and when Brighid’s call to arms came, Keepers were supposed to bring the wealth of their experience to the battle to end all battles. Nineteen Keepers. Fifty-four contingents.
Callie had been woefully unprepared for the challenge of a centuries-old loup-garou. Eva had been amazing. She’d used Callie, unbeknownst to her, to lure it. Silver and fire to trap it. And her sword to take its head. And just like that, Callie was hooked on the hunt.
“Never fails,” was Eva’s only comment over oysters and local beer, smoky jazz serenading their victory. “They give you a sword, show you how to swing it, and neglect the most important weapon in your arsenal—your brain.”
Then came 1984: Another loup-garou establishing territory, and this one brought friends. Nine dead, five before Eva called her in, the sixth the day she’d arrived. The hunt had been brutal and satisfying. Callie had claw rents across her ribs on the right, and her left knee still popped.
They went to the same oyster place, and drank the same beer. The music had changed to raunchy blues interspersed with eighties one-hit wonders.
“Not bad.” Eva toasted her over a forest of empties and a pile of oysters. “In fact, you’ve gotten rather good. But you don’t have to do it alone, you know.”
“You do,” Callie pointed out.
“True.” She cocked her head, sipping her beer. “Maybe what I should have said is that you shouldn’t do it alone. It’s a lonely thing, Callie-girl. Take it from me.”
And so she’d let Donal in, and then Chase. It had been nice, having a team. Belonging.
And now there was Liam.
She exhaled, and not just due to the overwhelming miasma of stale booze, slightly less stale vomit and polluted river. Ah, Bourbon Street. It was a smell you never forgot, no matter how many years between visits.
Bloody hell. What was she go
ing to do about Liam?
Fact of the matter was there was no escaping him. Surrounded by the uncertainty of betrayal, demons and Maeve, Liam seemed to be the only stability at the center of her very rocky equilibrium. If he kissed her again it would be the point of no return. And she couldn’t afford it. She had a job to do, one she wasn’t certain she’d make it out the other side of. She had rules for a reason.
“Wondering when you’d make your way here.”
Callie stopped in front of Saturday’s. She’d reached Royal Street without realizing.
The Baron turned a page in his newspaper. Callie wondered where he’d gotten it; hard copy had been virtually nonexistent since the war. Then she remembered who she was dealing with. “Baron.”
He didn’t look at her, though the white fedora on the bench beside him looked almost pert. “Took you long enough.”
“I’m a slow study.” Callie leaned against a gaslight, crossing her arms. “Humor me.”
The Baron folded his paper back horizontally, then vertically. He repeated the motion until he had a neat square of cheap newsprint before him. Then he removed a fountain pen from the inside pocket of his white blazer.
“Most folk do the crossword in pencil,” she observed. “At least, they used to.”
“I ain’t most people.” He cocked an eyebrow at her. “And neither are you, I might add.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
“All right. What if I told you there was no way to save your friend?”
“Eva?” Callie swallowed. “I know.”
“You know it, but you don’t believe it. Knowing and believing, they be two different beasts. One is in the head.” He tapped his forehead with two long fingers. “The other, in the heart.” He tapped his chest. “They be not in the order you think. And I did not mean your Eva.”
He meant, of course, her betrayer. “I only want to know why.”
“The wound you thought healed has festered. There be only one way to be rid of the infection.”
“And the demon?”
“Only one way to be rid of that too.”
Callie’s mouth twisted at the corner. “You trapped us here.”
“You trapped yourselves. Asked my permission and everything, as I recall.”
“So we did.” Callie cocked her head at him. “Do you really think I can kill this thing?”
“Alone? Not a chance. With him?” A single index finger, lifted to the sky. “One chance.”
“You trapped him here too. You knew this would come.”
The Baron had expressive hands. He fluttered one in midair, grinning. “All things are connected.” He laced his fingers with those of his other hand, and the newspaper and fountain pen inexplicably disappeared. “Our boy made a Crossroads bargain, and Brigitte called him here. The city has been doing its work on him—getting under his skin, into his blood. He’s as part of it as the Loa, now. He cares. And now he has you.”
Callie didn’t respond. Instead, she let the city around her seep into her senses, as she imagined it had done to Liam. The Baron’s words rolled around in her mind like dice. “It’s not Liam Yshotha fears. It’s both of us, together.” She chewed her bottom lip. “But I can’t ascend.” Her distant gaze swept back to him, abruptly focused. “Or can I?”
The Baron merely grinned.
Callie’s mind continued to tumble over and over, examining what she thought she knew from new angles. “Brighid isn’t here,” she mused. “But Brigitte is.”
The Baron clapped his hands and laughed.
The sudden idea took her breath away. Was it possible—just possible—she could stop Yshotha and survive? Had Eva realized the truth too late, and sacrificed herself to bring Callie here? Knowing, that it had to be one Keeper, and one…whatever Liam was, because he was tied to this city as the Loa’s guardian?
Two champions. One chance.
Thunder rolled and rumbled in the distance, the Louisiana sky hot pink bleeding into lavender, darkening to indigo. The occasional white-hot flash lit the world into a photographic negative, the air thick with the humid, desperate need to rain.
Callie wandered the French Quarter without paying much attention to where she was going. The crowds were thick tonight, the streets lined with domino groupings of motorbikes. She had always wanted one, but Chase and Donal both had categorically refused to let her. Deep down, she knew they were right. Still, it might have been fun. Liberating.
She passed jumble shops smashed in with cookie cutter tourist stores selling beads and shot glasses, clubs and twenty-four hour bars. Jazz and rock and blues tumbled out of open doors, neon lights from flashing signs dancing across the pavement in stained glass patterns. Muted clinks from dishes underscored raised voices and raucous music, the way warm, spicy smells of mouth-watering New Orleans cuisine undercut the pervasive odors of too many people combined with too much booze.
The Baron’s words rolled round and round endlessly in Callie’s mind, chasing her thoughts in a relentless game of What-If?
What if she said to hell and back with her bloody-minded rules? What if, as she suspected, Liam was more like her than even she’d imagined? After all, they were both appointed champions, both Marked. What if his light was exactly what she needed to make everything right?
His light.
Callie paused at a narrow side street, one she wouldn’t have noticed except for the faint strains of music drifting from the dark. At first she thought it might be blues, then jazz. But there was something beneath it, an undercurrent of drums, fiddle and what she thought might have been a fife, of all things.
There was something of the Tuatha in it, as well as the Loa. Everything New Orleans, and more besides. It was easy to see why Eva loved it here. Why Liam felt compelled to stay so long. The Baron had been right: the city was as much a part of him as he was of it. She could feel herself becoming a part of it as well.
Speaking of people, there was a crowd making its way toward her. Some of the participants had instruments, but most of them were dancing. Callie walked slowly along the narrow passage, more curious than disturbed. Her boots made no noise, while a breeze blew the tangled curls from her face. With it came the feel of warm, tropical scents and star spangled skies. Of cinnamon spice days and rum soaked nights.
And music. So much music. It reached into her, drew her closer. The crowd parted around her, surrounded her until all she could see were flashing, turning bodies. Friendly hands pulled her into the swirling mass, urged her to join them. She laughed.
An opening appeared in the crush, giving her an unencumbered view of the path she’d just taken. Another breeze as the bodies shifted, and she turned to see the tall, shadowed figure at the end of the street. She stood still while he approached, muscles tensing.
Then a stream of light from a nearby sign illuminated the figure, and she relaxed. Liam had found her. She knew then he would always find her, because they were the same.
He stopped in front of her, dark eyes radiating concern. “You didn’t come back.”
“How long have I been gone?”
“Half the night. I was worried.”
Callie looked to the sky, and saw he was right.
It’s a lonely thing, Callie-girl.
He tucked his fingers beneath her chin and tugged her around to face him again. “Callie?”
“I need your help.”
Liam didn’t hesitate. “Anything.”
“Hold on to me.”
It was different from what she knew, but not unfamiliar. There was the same empty void, coupled with underwater pressure and lack of sensory detail. She pressed her ear to his chest, filling her mind with the sound of his heart. The light within her was dimmed, but not gone.
Liam’s warmth seeped into her, his scent of fire-warmed brandy and light citrus. She let it flood her senses, blocking everything else out.
Drums turned to a slow pulse she felt with her whole body. Her nerve endings tingled. Anticipation built in her gut,
followed the creeping sense of nothing that spoke of between. That nothing filled with everything New Orleans, everything him. Its music, its energy, its connection to the Loa. She gathered it around her, and reached for a different light. She reached for Liam’s.
The ground shifted beneath her feet, Liam’s arms tightening around her. It felt so, so safe. So much so she hardly noticed when everything stopped between one heartbeat and the next. One heartbeat, they were still in the narrow street surrounded by swirling music and spinning bodies. The next heartbeat, they were on Liam’s balcony.
Liam relaxed his grip, enough for her to settle back from the balls of her feet. When she moved to step away, he dug in again. “Wait. Give me a second.”
Callie exhaled. “I’m sorry. I should have warned you. Are—”
His mouth descended on hers.
Her reaction was electric, her body still pulsing. She was filled with light and music and living. It was the breathless feeling of the Tír, of New Orleans after being away a long time. Her body surged forward before her brain started spouting stupid rules.
The iron balcony railing dug into the small of her back as he pushed her against it, one hand in her hair, his other arm wrapped around her torso. Her center of gravity shifted, and she had grab onto him to keep from losing her balance.
“Where the hell do you come from, Callie?” he said between kissing her. “It’s you. You’re what I’ve been waiting for, all this time.”
“Yes,” Callie breathed. “Oh, yes.” Suddenly, it was the simplest thing in the world, being with him. The simplest and the most right.
He pulled away suddenly, breathing hard. He looked at her with liquid dark eyes. “If you’re going to stop this, now would be the time.”
Callie considered it for about half a second. She almost laughed at herself. “No need to play the gentleman.”
He grinned. “I’m always a gentleman.”
He lifted her from her feet and spun her away from the railing. He set her back down long enough to dig the pins out of her hair and bury his hands in her multi-hued curls. They stumbled against the crumbling brick façade, cushioned by ivy and moss. Then he stepped to the side and tumbled them through the open French window.
